Label Press Handbook

01 Getting in Everyone

The label press runs in a browser. There is nothing to install, and it works the same on the office PC and on a tablet on the line.

1. Go to allcompanylabels.meatplus.ph.
2. Sign in with your work email and password.
3. If you have never used it, choose Create one, fill in your name, your @meatplus.ph email and a password.

What your role lets you do

Changing your password

Press Password in the top bar. Type the one you have now, then the new one twice, and press Change it. Everyone has this button — operators as well as administrators — and it changes your own password only.

Your current password is asked for every time, even though you are already signed in. That is deliberate: on a shared machine left signed in, anyone walking past could otherwise lock you out of your own account. Use at least 8 characters.

If you have forgotten it, an administrator can set a new one for you on the Users tab. Nobody — not an administrator, not this page — can read your existing password; it can only be replaced. Change the one they give you the first time you sign in with it.

Leaving the station

Lock (top right) puts the sign-in screen back up but keeps everything where it is — use it when you step away from a shared machine. Sign out ends the session properly. Every label you print is recorded under your name, so do not let someone else print under yours.

02 Printing a label Everyone

This is the job. Everything else in the handbook exists to make this step correct.

1. Choose the customer. This narrows the product list to that customer's items, loads that customer's label size, and is recorded in the print log. Customer details never appear on the label itself.
2. Choose the product. Each entry reads Name · Pack size · Barcode number, so you can tell two similar products apart before you pick. Choosing one fills in all three fields below. Pick Custom entry to type a one-off label instead.
3. Check the dates. Today sets the production date. The shelf-life buttons — +3 mo, +6 mo, +1 yr, +2 yr — set the expiry from it. You can always type a date instead.
4. Enter the batch or lot if the box is showing. It only appears for code types that can carry one, and it goes inside the barcode rather than being printed as text.
5. Set the number of copies.
6. Look at the preview and the message underneath it before you print. Section 3 explains what the messages mean.
7. Press Print label and check the print dialog — see section 9.

What ends up on the label

The customer's name, contact and address are never printed. They are held with the job so the print log can say who it was for.

03 Reading the preview Everyone

The panel on the right is a true-to-size drawing of what will come out of the printer, plus a line of measurements and a message. Read the message.

The measurement line

Underneath the preview: the label size, the code type, the size of the code, the module width (the width of the thinnest bar), the printer resolution, and — for a QR — its version and error-correction level.

Module width is the number that decides whether a scanner can read your label. Below one printer dot it cannot print evenly at all; below about 0.25 mm it gets unreliable. The app watches this for you and says so.

“This barcode carries”

For a GS1-128 or a Digital Link QR, a small panel lists every field that went into the code, each with its identifier — the production date, the expiry date, the batch. Check it before a long run: it is the only place you can see that the right dates actually made it in.

04 Printing a mixed run Everyone

The queue lets you print several different products — even for different customers, on different label sizes — in one go.

1. Set up the first label as usual and press Add to queue.
2. Change the fields for the next one and add that too. Repeat.
3. Adjust the number of copies on any queued line by typing straight into it.
4. Press Print queue. Each label goes onto a page of its own correct size.
5. Clear queue empties it when you are done.

05 Products Everyone

The catalog saves you retyping a name, a pack size and a barcode number every time. Every product belongs to exactly one customer.

1. Open Products and fill in the name, pack size, barcode number and customer.
2. Press Add product.

You can also press Save to products on the Print tab to file whatever is currently in the form.

If you are an operator

Your new product is saved straight away but marked PENDING, with your name against it. It cannot be printed until an administrator approves it, and it will not appear in the Print tab's product list until then. You can still edit or withdraw your own proposal while it waits.

If you are an administrator

A number appears on the Products and Customers tabs showing how many are waiting. Open the tab and press Approve or Reject on each. Approving makes it printable immediately.

Import CSV brings in a whole list at once — columns name, size, code, customer. It adds new barcode numbers and updates matching ones. Export CSV takes the list out again, which is how you move a catalog between the online system and an offline station.

06 Customers Everyone

A customer holds a name and code, optional contact details, an optional logo, and — importantly — that customer's label size.

• Name and code are all that is required. The code is what shows in brackets in the pickers, e.g. Hard Discount Philippines,Inc. (DALI).
• The logo is only ever shown on screen, beside the customer's name, so you can see at a glance you have the right one. It is not printed on the label.
• Label width and height give that customer its own stock. Leave them blank and the customer follows the house default.
• A customer with products against it cannot be deleted until those products are moved or removed.

Operators can propose a new customer; it waits for approval exactly like a product does.

07 Label setup Administrators

One company at a time. Everything on this tab belongs to whichever company is chosen at the top — including which code type its labels carry.

1. Open Label setup and use Whose labels are you setting up? to pick the company. The banner tells you whether it has its own stock or is still following the house default.
2. Set the size preset (or type a width and height), the margin, and the printer resolution to match the stock actually loaded in that printer.
3. Press Auto-fit to stock. This grows the text and the code to the largest size that still fits, then you can adjust by eye. The barcode is taken out to the full printable width, less the clear space a scanner needs on either side — on a small label that clear space is the only thing standing between the bars and the edge, so do not close it up by hand.
4. Choose the code type and the measurements that go with it.

Rolls with more than one label across

Some die-cut stock carries two or more labels side by side — 43 × 33 mm two across is a common one. Set Width and Height to one label, then set Labels across the roll to how many sit side by side and Gap between them to the space between two neighbouring labels. The measurement line under the preview then shows both: the label, and the roll it is printed on.

The preview then shows the whole row as it comes off the roll — both labels, with a dashed line where the die cut runs between them. If any wording or the barcode reaches that line, the label is too full: shorten it, or press Auto-fit.

08 Which code type Administrators

Set per company, on Label setup. All of them carry the same item number — what differs is how much else travels with it, and who can read it.

If you are unsure, GS1-128 is the one worth moving to: it is the same bars we already print, and it means one scan captures the dates and the batch instead of somebody reading them off the label and typing them in.

09 Getting it on paper Everyone

Two ways. Use the first unless someone has set you up for the second.

Through the printer driver — the normal way

1. Press Print label (or Print queue).
2. In the print dialog, choose your Zebra or Godex printer.
3. Set the paper size to the same size as the label.
4. Set scale to 100% — not “fit to page”, which quietly shrinks the barcode until it will not scan.
5. Turn margins off, and turn background graphics on if your browser offers it.

Direct ZPL — sharpest bars

Sending ZPL straight to the printer's port skips the driver, and the printer renders the bars at exact dot boundaries. Use Copy ZPL or Download .zpl on the Print tab. The layout matches, but the text comes out in the printer's own built-in font rather than the typewriter face of the sample label.

^XA
^CI28
^PW400 ^LL240 ^LH0,0
^FO10,10^A0N,17,10^FB380,1,0,C,0^FDAllJoy Chicken Gizzard^FS
^BY3,3.0,80
^FO40,101^BCN,80,Y,N,N^FD39012473^FS
^PQ1,0,0,N
^XZ

10 The print log Everyone

Every run is recorded automatically. Nobody has to write anything down.

Each row holds the date and time, who printed it, the customer, the product, the pack size, the barcode number, the production and expiry dates, and how many labels.

• Export CSV gives you the whole log for a spreadsheet — for a recall trace, a customer query, or a month-end count.
• Only an administrator can clear the log.
• The name on each row is whoever was signed in. This is exactly why the Lock button exists: labels printed under your name are your responsibility.

11 The activity trail Administrators

Who did what, and when. The print log answers “what did we print?”; this answers “who changed that?”

The Activity tab lists every change anybody makes: sign-ins, products and customers added, edited, deleted, approved or rejected, CSV imports, label setup changes, accounts created, roles changed, access removed — and the print log being cleared.

• Search across every column at once — a person’s name, a product, a barcode number, an action.
• Filter by kind to see only sign-ins, only products, only accounts, and so on.
• Export CSV takes out whatever is currently on screen, filters and all.
• The most recent 500 entries are shown.

What it is actually for

Three questions it answers quickly: who changed this product’s barcode number, and when? — who gave that person administrator access? — and, after a bad run, did the label setup change just before it? Filter by kind, or search the product name, and read down.

12 Accounts Administrators

The Users tab. Names here are the names that appear in the print log, so put in real ones.

1. Fill in the person's name, their work email as the username, and a role.
2. Set a password and repeat it. Tell them to change it when they first sign in.
3. Press Add a user.

• A username cannot be changed once the account exists.
• Editing someone and leaving the password boxes empty keeps their current password. Filling them in resets it — use that when someone has forgotten theirs. The reset is recorded on the Activity tab, and people can change their own password themselves from the Password button in the top bar, so this should be rare.
• You cannot remove your own access.
• Export users CSV gives names, usernames and roles only — never passwords.

13 When it looks wrong Everyone